Foul shews the guilt of Ephraim, Samaria’s malice is plain to view. What a workshop of wrong-doing is here, all thieving within doors, all robbery without! 2 Let them never complain I am too nice over the chronicling of their misdeeds; why, they blazon these ill designs of theirs, under my very eyes! 3 King himself there is no pleasing but by villainy, nor his nobles but by flattering speeches; 4 false is every one of them to his troth. What else is this whole realm but baker that lights his fire, and then takes a rest from his kneading, leaves yeast to spread as it will? 5 Huzza for our king?[2] Ay, but see how the princes fall to their carousing, and he himself reaches out for the wine, reckless as they! 6 Their scheming adds fuel to the fire; are there not plots afoot? Sleeps baker the long night through, and morning finds him flaming hot like the rest. 7 A very furnace the city is; ruler may not abide nor king stand before the heat of it, and never a man among them invokes my name! 8 What wonder Ephraim should throw in his lot with the Gentiles? No better than a girdle-cake is Ephraim, baked only on one side.[3]

9 Foreign neighbours, all unawares, have drained the strength of him; the dark locks, all unawares, dappled with grey; 10 and even now self-condemned stands the pride of Israel;[4] return to the Lord, recourse to the Lord is none, even now. 11 Never silly dove so lost her wits as this Ephraim, now calling on Egypt, now turning to Assyria for aid! 12 Fatal the journey; my net I mean to spread over them, catch them as in the fowler’s snare; public the chastisement shall be, as public the warning. 13 Dearly they shall pay for their wandering from me, ruin follow on the heels of rebellion; I their ransomer, and they so false! 14 Never do their hearts cry out to me; growl they like beast in den, or beast-like eat and drink and chew the cud; me they have forsaken.[5] 15 Now I chasten them, now I strengthen their hands, and still they have no thought for me but of hatred; 16 ever they step back from the yoke,[6] like a twisted bow recoil.

Put to the sword their nobles must be, railing tongues the ruin of them. This the taunt that shall be uttered against them in the land of Egypt …

[1] So the Latin version, but the Hebrew text and the Septuagint Greek are more naturally translated, ‘When I grant’. It seems doubtful, therefore, whether the first seven words of the verse really fit on to what follows.

[3] The allegory from cooking seems to be a double one; the baker (apparently the people of Israel) goes to sleep and lets the fire blaze up, instead of keeping a moderate heat, and at the same time he does not finish kneading the dough, so that the result is a half-baked state of things. The application is not easily made; but perhaps the passage reflects the disappointment of God-fearing people at the relapse of Jehu’s dynasty into idolatry, after the overthrow of Achab’s Baal-worship. The ruling class, it seems to be intimated, are too strong for the new sovereigns, and the old ways come back again.

[4] ‘Self-condemned stands the pride of Israel’; the same words are used as in 5.5 above, but the Latin version here has ‘The pride of Israel shall be humbled before his very eyes’. It seems unlikely that we are meant to vary the interpretation in this way.

[5] Literally, ‘And they did not cry out to me with their heart, but howled in their beds, chewed the cud over wheat and wine, departed from me’. If ‘chewed the cud’ is the right interpretation of the rare verb used, we must suppose that the Israelites are being compared to dumb beasts. But it seems likely that the text is corrupt.

[6] The Hebrew text is usually interpreted as meaning, ‘they return, (but) not upwards’, a phrase which leaves a good deal to the imagination. The latter part of the verse, if the text is genuine, can hardly be understood except on the supposition that some words have fallen out at the end of it.